


iron wounds

by ArtsyAfrodite



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Brotp, Friendship, Gen, Shameless Spoilers with my own touch, because I refuse to let Mandy leave with an abusive boyfriend, season 5 speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:27:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyAfrodite/pseuds/ArtsyAfrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian gets it.  Mandy thinks she’s made of metal, always has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	iron wounds

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been having a lot of Ian and Mandy feels. How I miss their friendship and the closeness they once had. [[SPOILER ALERT]] This is based off of the spoiler that Mandy may be moving to Ohio with Kenyatta, but I just couldn't let that go down in this fic, so I tweaked it the way I saw fit...

He sits, heavy like lead on the couch, staring holes into the wall.  Aside from Ian’s stint in the hospital, Mickey’s never felt more helpless.  He curls his tattooed fingers in on themselves, avoiding the touch Ian’s just offered.  Failures don’t deserve comfort.

“Keep your fucking affection,” he bites, causing Ian to flinch.  “It ain’t gonna help.”

Ian runs both of his hands down his face, focuses on the rattle Yevgeny’s banging against his bouncer.  Anything but Mickey’s face and the way his jaw twitches with anger.  “Don’t you at least wanna go home and talk to her?” Ian asks hesitantly.  He knows saying the wrong thing right now could snap his boyfriend like a twig.

“No.”

“Well I’m going,” Ian says as he stands and puts on his jacket, “with or without you.”

He contemplates brushing his hand across Mickey’s cheek, but refrains from the fear his fingers will break the fragile glass his face has become.  He exits the house he grew up in, and heads to the Milkovich house that has lately been his home.

*

“He broke you, didn’t he?”

She shakes slightly as she curls further into his bones, burying her face more into his chest.  Her eyes are closed tight as she wills away the tears.  There are too many wounds to decide which one he’s just reopened.  All she knows is that it hurts.  Her breathing crawls and scratches up her chest, the way the shame rushes in thickening the air in her lungs.  She wasn’t allowed to do this – to hurt.  To feel pain.  Mandy Milkovich was supposed to be _ironclad_.

“Is it hard?” she asks as she finally looks at her best friend lying next to her.  Ian frowns, his eyebrows pushing inward.  He’s confused, and rightfully so.  He’d promised not to do this.  “You fucking promised.” 

Ian trims away at his edges, frayed from the way his own stresses have twisted and stretched him.  He has to be there for Mandy, even if just for a few more hours.  He holds himself together for her, considers her feelings.  “I know I did,” he offers.  They weren’t supposed to talk about this, the very reasons behind the crumpled bus ticket in her back pocket and the bags packed in the dark corner of her room.  “And is what hard?” he asks, “keeping a promise?”

Mandy blinks blearily at Ian.  “No,” she exhales, “reopening iron wounds,” she answers solemnly. 

Ian gets it.  Mandy thinks she’s made of metal, always has.  That Milkovch gene doesn’t just run deep, it runs cold and hard, making veins icy and turning flesh metallic.  Ian knows this all too well, his own skin used to the clanging of Mickey’s when he feels the need to put up his iron defenses.  Still, he doesn’t let this slide.  Too many things have fallen through the cracks with them already.

“But he broke you Mandy,” he reiterates.

“Which one?” she chuckles.  But there’s no real joy behind her forced laughter.  She answers Ian’s question with a question, her poor attempt to be clever, the truth telling itself and quickly killing the sarcasm from the actuality of her words.  There were so many – too many.  She should be nothing but pieces by now.

“Which one?” Ian asks, somewhat incredulous.  “Not which one Mandy.  Kenyatta, that abusive fuck.”

Mandy sits up quickly and burns a hole through Ian’s face from the fire in her stare.  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” she says harshly. 

“But – “

“Just…don’t,” she cuts him off.  There’s a harsh crack of silence as the two best friends stare at each other, the closeness they once had suddenly widening, making apparent the gap that’s grown between them lately.  Ian blames running away.  Mandy blames letting him.  Ian blames getting sick.  Mandy blames making herself sick. 

Neither one of them are to blame.

“You can’t break something that’s already broken Ian.”

Ian sits up and presses his back into Mandy’s headboard.  Instinctively, he pulls her in close, lets her rest her head on his shoulder.  He gently brushes her now blonde hair out of her face, feeling a slight wetness in a clump of strands.  A single tear had gotten away, escaped her eye. 

“You’re not broken Mandy, just wounded,” Ian offers her assurance.  It slides off of her frail shoulders.

Mandy grabs Ian’s hand, twining her fingers with his.  “Thing is,” she says lowly, the weight of her words pressing down on her tongue, “I’m exactly that, broken…and by many.”

Ian focuses his eyes on the way Mandy’s hands shake slightly and it frightens hm.  But worse than that, the realization that she’s leaving makes his own hands quiver.  “I know Kenyatta isn’t the only guy that’s hurt you,” he admits.

“No,” Mandy says, still focused on the web their fingers make.  “My father hurt me first, and your brother hurt me last.  We won’t even mention the in-betweens.” 

Ian feels a tremor pass through his body at the mention of Terry, but more from the mention of his older brother.  Lip was guilty of his fair share of breaking, his hands always sledge hammer wielding.  Mandy’s heart was never safe with him.  He broke her for the last time after sleeping with her during the summer, just to get her to drop Kenyatta, knowing he couldn’t promise her anything beyond the ulterior motive.

_“What are you even getting out of this?” Mandy asked Lip, her body coming down from the post-coital wave._

_He looked at her, her blue eyes large and expectant.  Lip simply shrugged, unfazed and offering nothing.  “Just having a little fun,” he said nonchalantly.  He pretended he didn’t see the disappointment kill her smile and so much more._

 

Of course Kenyatta played angry detective after that and found out, ultimately slamming Mandy’s face into the tiled, bathroom wall.  Lip went dumb when he saw her, offered her no words of comfort or apology.

Mandy screamed about how the blood would never come out of the tile, but not once about her bruised and bloodied face.

“But you don’t have to leave,” Ian says in almost a whisper.  “I would never hurt you, and Mickey wouldn’t either.  We’re both here for you.”

“I know,” Mandy responds.  She then looks up at Ian, catching his green eyes with her blue ones.  They were always a perfect match.  “But I have to do this, be on my own for a change without depending on the men in my life.  Otherwise I’ll continue to lose myself, and continue to get hurt.”  Mandy’s convinced she’s discovered one hundred and one new ways to be broken.  If she stays another day, it will be one hundred and two, easily.  “I’m sick of being a fucking piñata.”

There would be no more blind swinging of sticks at her until she broke, spilling every good thing out of her just for them to steal it all.

Ian feels himself sink into her mattress.  “Time does your bus leave?” he asks reluctantly.  He doesn’t want to, but he does.  Not asking won’t keep her here.

“At four.”

Ian glances at his watch.  They have about two hours to kill before then.  He lies back flat on Mandy’s bed, pulling her down with him and stares up at the ceiling.  She looks too.  Maybe if they stared long enough, hard enough, they would see the galaxies, perhaps a few shooting stars light years away from the shit and grime of the Southside.

But the water spots stand in proxy.

“Mickey, he…” Ian trails off breathily, “I – I know he wanted to be here.  But he just, couldn’t.”

“You mean wouldn’t,” Mandy counters. 

“He’s just upset.”

“I know.  It’s because he blames himself.”  Mandy then peels her eyes off of the stars of water spots on the ceiling, and casts her eyes on the worry lines in Ian’s forehead.  “But I need you to tell him to stop fucking moping, because it isn’t his fault.  There’s nothing he did to make me leave, and nothing he can do to make me stay.  I have to do this, for me.”

“You know your brother, he’s protective of the people he loves,” Ian says as his frown subcutaneously deepens.  “I’ll try to convince him, but it’ll be hard.” 

“I’m sure it will be.”

It’s not easy getting through to someone who thinks they’re made of iron.

Mandy lets out a long sigh and wraps her arm around Ian’s waist.  She squeezes and closes her eyes.  Ian continues to stare at the ceiling, willing away time’s tendency to go by quickly.  He pulls himself together when he feels his edges slowly unraveling again.  He has to remain somewhat strong for his best friend.

Even if only for two more hours.

*

It’s time.

He watches as Mandy clutches her bags tight and steps up onto the bus landing.  It’s raining.  She turns and offers Ian a reassuring smile, her hair damp and wavy, face stripped bare.  She’s never looked more beautiful.  She doesn’t have much with her, yet she’s leaving with a hell of a lot. 

“I’ll Skype you from California all the time,” she smiles.  She doesn’t look so sad anymore.

“You better,” Ian responds in the most upbeat way possible. 

He watches as his best friend turns her back and makes her way onto the bus.  She waves at him when it pulls off, and Ian feels the gap get wider.

*

Ian finds Mickey in their room at the Milkovich house when he gets back.  He must have gotten there after him and Mandy headed for the Greyhound station.  Yevgeny’s asleep on his belly at the head of the bed in a fortress of pillows to keep him from rolling, while Mickey sips a beer at the foot.  Ian walks over to him, and slowly lowers himself on the bed.  He feels Mickey go stiff when their thighs touch. 

“She’s gone,” Ian says lowly.  His voice cracks at the end.  Mickey’s shoulders slump from the words.  They both drop their heads in unison.

“I know,” Mickey responds barely above a whisper.  “I know.”

This time, Ian brushes his fingers across Mickey’s face.   He doesn’t shatter from his touch, but Ian knows he’s pretty damn close.

Because contrary to what they believe, the Milkoviches aren’t made of metal.    

**Author's Note:**

> Mandy leaving with Kenyatta? Yeah - nope. The show may do that, but not I. NOT I. If she leaves, I think it should be on her own terms, by herself and without a man. She needs none of that foolery. I also just love Ian and Mandy's friendship, and wish they would show more of that before they just ship her off. I also sent her to Cali...my girl needs some sunshine in her life for a change. Thanks for reading. :)
> 
> penprowess.tumblr.com


End file.
